“Gay marriage is just not on.” Actually, I think it’s an improvement on what the bigots usually come up with! Nonetheless, it’s clear we’re not dealing with a great intellect here. I bet Cleggie’s cringing like crazy over this!!!

An miniscule improvement for a bigot. They’re in all 3 parties it seems, the majority in the nasty party of course. Birtwistle’s seat may just not be on in 2015. I hope he’s voted out. The Liberal Democrats are in decline anyway. I won’t be surprised if Labour wins with a mandate. Failure to get equal marriage through safely will guarantee it. So those voting no do so at their own peril. I can’t imagine they’ll be content with Labour policies for 5 or 10 years affecting their lives directly.

He’ll almost certainly be out in 2015. He squeaked into a Labour heartland and the seat had previously been held by a Labour MP with big dark clouds over her head after an expenses scandal (Kittie Usher). His majority is around 1500 but it won’t hold up.

I figured as much. Maybe that’s why he feels so empowered to declare his intention, nothing to lose. He doesn’t belong in the Liberal Democratic party. Another thing, he’s supposed to uphold party policy and equal marriage is one of them. He should have been ejected by Clegg just like that other Lib Dem idiot mouthing off about her religious beliefs, can’t recall her name.

This guy is a square peg in a round hole. he should defect to UKIP asap. I, for one, will continue to vote Lib Dem for the time being. Although I waver between them and Labour, I will support them because they have supported us. Lynne Featherstone is my MP and I will certainly be voting for her. It’s a national embarrassment that UKIP are now in 3rd place. I hope it’s temporary.

Some of these trolls just need to see their face on the news or newspaper…most are too stupid to realize their statements or garbage that pour from their mouths make them so insane and foolish…what koots????

calvin, it’s still looking good for getting legislation through the House of Commons. I’m less certain about the House of Lords and have suggested that the Campaign For Equal Marriage start polling the voting intentions of peers…

No, they’re not as of now. We only know of roughly 293 and we need far more, at least 326, but more would be better. We don’t know how the others will vote, none have indicated which way. Maybe it will become more apparent as the legislation approaches Parliament. All we’ve been getting lately are those voting NO, not many publicly declaring they’ll vote yes.

320 is the magic number as the Speaker doesn’t vote, Sinn Fein don’t take their seats at Westminster and the SNP abstain on devolved issues.

We can relax a bit – the Tory homophobes highest projections for no is around 130, lets err on huge side of caution and say 150 vote no. That’s still 150 Tories in favour. Add the vast majority of LibDem and Lab MPs and equal marriage will pass with a stonking majority. Maybe even 3-1.

I also think the fears for the Lords are overblown. It’ll pass there too and probably fairly comfortably. Equal marriage is coming :)

The Spectator did an excellent analysis of the HoL, and it is pretty clear that there will be no major obstacles there. As for Commons, it is pretty clear that the bill will pass, since it will gain the vast majority of Labour and LibDem votes. That alone would be enough, but of course it will garner a substantial number of Tory votes as well. The issue isn’t passage. The issue is the size of the majority voting to approve. This is an historic vote. We want, and should work for, a very substantial majority.

I think, for most homophobic, anti-gay marriage politicians or campaigners same-sex marriage is like the highest and most ‘terrible’ form of identification under compulsion with gay people (‘I can marry, and ‘they’ can marry – in the same city hall, maybe even in the same church, oh, my God!’) – and its a little ‘too much’, difference must rest: ‘we’ have marriage, and ‘they’ have civil partnership, what, as say Mr. Birtwistle, ‘is okay’. Well, dear Gordon, not for us. And never again, I hope.

Or a Labour government with a mandate if equal marriage fails, both the Tories and UKIP’s worst nightmare. You have to be insane voting for the UKIP. It’s just another hateful anti-equality, anti-gay party that might attract disgruntled bigoted Tories as a protest against Cameron. Good, let them defect then they won’t be able to complain when Labour reverses all of the economic policies currently in place that will affect those idiots directly.

Come on Burnley gays, lesbians, and all Marriage Equality supporters. Surely someone’s got some dirt to discredit this bigot! If so, go to the papers like Carol Shaw in Brent did re. the Tory homophobe was having an affair with her on the sly for 11 years.

I don’t think Nick Clegg was prepared for this. Some explaining to do I think. Now he’s seeing what a free vote will do. A conscience vote is code for NO,no doubt about it. All of that bogus concern from MPs about not having a free vote. They wouldn’t vote yes either way. By the time the legislation is up for a vote, the government should make absolutely sure that the votes are there otherwise it makes NO sense in doing it. We more or less know who the majority of naysayers are. What was the last count of those voting a definite ‘yes’ amounting to 293? We need a lot more than that, at least 326, more ideally to guarantee safe passage in the Lords.

Of course the C4M hate group and Tory back benchers are going to spin it as if the majority in all three parties are against equal marriage. The Mail and Telegraph will rev it up and make hay out of it.

I retract the above as I know little about the guy, but spoke in exasperation that a Lib Dem MP would take this approach to equality and civil rights for tax paying consenting adults. Find it mystifying to be honest.

Even the Mail concedes that 60% of the British public support equal marriage, probably more, yet this idiot doesn’t quite grasp what representing all of his constituents means. Since he can’t support us, irrespective of his personal beliefs, then he and all those in opposition should resign.

‘Gay marriage’ is not only ‘not on’ it is also an oxymoron .It’s a bit like saying eating with ones bellybutton is ‘eating’ , lets redefine ‘eating’ and if you disagree you are a bigot, dinosaur , living in the dark ages etc …

A life-long commitment between a man and a woman is a relationship involving sexual difference, involving male-female complementarity. For this reason, it allows children to be conceived and born within the life-long union of their own natural parents, and it is a form of commitment and family life that allows children to grow up with their own natural parents over a lifetime. This simply isn’t possible for a same-sex couple.

This doesn’t mean that a man and a woman are obliged to have children, or that they are always capable of having children. It’s simply a recognition that one distinctive aspect of this kind of male-female relationship is that, in ordinary circumstances, it can involve conceiving and bringing up their own children.

Meh! Mr Natural, do you live in a cave and wear animals skins or something?
Now if you did I might listen to all your crap about natural this and natural that except you probably wouldn’t have access to the internet.

Marriage is primarily society’s way of legally recognising that two previously unrelated adults should have responsibility for each other. It ceased to be a life-long commitment between a man and a woman for the purpose of raising both parents’ biological children some time back, if it ever was. Remember that not that long ago it was typical for a man or woman would die before their children came of age.

And that’s one reason why now is the time to remove the need for the adults involved in a marriage to be of opposite sex, just as many other countries have already done, and just as many more are doing right now. Children need stability, adults need stability, and society needs stability. The way our society promotes stability is marriage. It must be open to all, so that we all benefit.

You’re an idiot! The purpose of marriage is NOT procreation. People have been having children long before marriage was invented. Don’t think for a minute that you are off the hook by mentioning that not all heterosexuals can procreate. It doesn’t work that way, pal. There are plenty of widows and widowers left with young children and who never remarry. There are plenty of heterosexuals who have children who live together and who do not marry. There are plenty of heterosexuals who commit adultery, the very antithesis of what marriage is supposed to be. There are plenty of single bisexuals with natural children from a former marriage and who raise their children alone or with a partner of the same gender. Maybe if heterosexuals would desist from over breeding, children wouldn’t end up in foster homes being shunted from one place to another. There are plenty of heterosexuals who have children outside of intercourse, surrogacy and invitro fertilization, moron and mariage….

So if the defining characteristic of an opposite-sex couple isn’t that they are capable of having biological children together, what is it? If I point out a couple to you, how would you go about determining whether or not they are the same sex? It can’t be sex chromosomes (because of Klinefelter syndrome, Swyer syndrome, etc.), or genitalia (which can be ambiguous), or gender identity (some people don’t identify as either male or female).

Just as a matter of interest, do you think that when women were given the vote, was the word voting ‘redefined’, or was the act of (legal) voting just extended to include women? When the age of consent was reduced from 21 to 18 then 16, was the word ‘consent’ redefined each time, or did the same word just apply to an extended range of people? When it became illegal to send 5 y.o. children up chimneys, did the definition of ‘chimney sweep’ change? When marriage ceased to be a defence for husbands to force their wives to have sex, was marriage re-defined then?…..

Not really. The major churches have been lobbying for years in preparation for this. Some of the lies they’ve been peddling have stuck in the minds of a few, but the majority of Brits see the propaganda for what it is.

There could be as many as 150 MPs that vote against equality when the Bill comes before the Commons. Voices like Birtwistle’s are therefore to be expected. Certainly nothing to get too irate about. They are already in the minority and becoming fewer every year.

That’s what the free vote does, all of the low-lives and crazies coming out of the woodwork. They’ve lulled themselves into a false sense of security and becoming emboldened by it because they now know they won’t be censured or punished by their party but the voters will take care of that in 2015. It’s not the dark side of the British people but those in government coming out against it. The vast majority of the British public support equal marriage by 60% or more, and that’s a figure the right wing Daily Mail conceded. People like Birtwistle shouldn’t even be in politics, highly unqualified to represent everyone.

Well if Civil partnerships are fine campaign to have one yourself but stop excluding others the right to decide to marry… or indeed not to marry.

The last census showed married people are now considered a minority in the UK so they can’t even use that as an argument either. I’ve heard that a few times other people saying people won’t get married if the ‘Gays’ do… what nonsense.

They are the first to claim marriage creates a stable society so what right have they got to stop it.

Time they stopped their nasty bigoted judging and started to except Equality.

The thing is, if you asked him or anyone of his mindset if they would consider a CP if available to them, they’d say no without as much as providing a reasoned explanation. What it would do would force them to admit that CPs aren’t equal ((some bigots have already conceded that one) because straight people can marry, the preferred union. I suspect it’s the sex thing coming in to play, penis/vagina nonsense and of course that old chestnut, procreation.

That married people are now considered a minority in the UK is a new weapon some Tory MPs in opposition are using by blaming it on equal marriage. They even cite countries such as Spain claiming that fewer people are marrying there. If they did their homework, the state of Massachusetts in America has a higher marriage rate than any other state in the country, the first state to legalise equal marriage I might add. These are desperate people coming up with the most desperate spurious claims, nothing more.

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